Enhancing positive effects for the communicative language teaching activities in English classrooms

This article is about how to enhance the positive effect for the CLT activities by using technology equipment. In this article, the author reviews the crucial theory of the improvement effects for the CLT activities, and therefrom practical activities are designed to teach English speaking skills.

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM TP HỒ CHÍ MINH TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION JOURNAL OF SCIENCE KHOA HỌC GIÁO DỤC EDUCATION SCIENCE ISSN: 1859-3100 Tập 16, Số (2019): 216-226 Vol 16, No (2019): 216-226 Email: tapchikhoahoc@hcmue.edu.vn; Website: http://tckh.hcmue.edu.vn Research Article ENHANCING POSITIVE EFFECTS FOR THE COMMUNICATIVE+ LANGUAGE TEACHING ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH CLASSROOMS Nguyen Van My Ho Chi Minh City University of Education Corresponding author: Nguyen Van My – Email: nguyenvanmy@hcmue.edu.vn Received: April 10, 2019; Revised: July 13, 2019; Accepted: July 18, 2019 ABSTRACT Nowadays, most English teachers have widely applied the Communicative Language Teaching activities (the CLT activities) in English classrooms as a foreign language (EFL) because of their outstanding effectiveness In spite of having many benefits for learning and teaching English, activities in CLT also have problems with mixed-level students, un-motivated students and large class sizes, as well as lack of language environment for foreign language acquisition This article is about how to enhance the positive effect for the CLT activities by using technology equipment In this article, the author reviews the crucial theory of the improvement effects for the CLT activities, and therefrom practical activities are designed to teach English speaking skills Keywords: Communicative Language Teaching activities, mixed – level learners, student’s learning motivations, technology equipment Introduction Understandably, most English teachers around the world have applied the CLT activities in EFL classrooms Many experts, however, have claimed that as mixed – level learners, some of the learners may obtain more benefits from these tasks than others In addition, other critics have argued that the CLT activities are not enough to acquire a target language (L2) because they are implemented only within a “monolingual community” As mentioned by Manag (2007), “within that wider community, we would need to create a learning environment in which the classroom was less rigidly defined so that students could reach into the target communities and contribute actively to meaningful exchanges there” Therefore, students should be immersed in target communities and consequently, they would gain communicative competence in real-world situations It is obvious that linguistic environment plays an important role in the development of language skills for non-native learners while acquiring foreign languages According to Cite this article as: Nguyen Van My (2019) Enhancing positive effects for the communicative language teaching activities in English classrooms Ho Chi Minh City University of Education Journal of Science, 16(8), 216-226 216 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Nguyen Van My Wang (2009), for the children, when exposure to the different languages, they not only acquire their first language but also can acquire the foreign language For those abroad or mixed with speakers of another language, they have a pressing desire to communicate and to get their meaning across They have many opportunities to speak and experiment with the language In other words, it is important for all learners to immerse in the target language (L2) because non-native learners might have opportunities to practice interactively the target language skills However, most of the recent EFL classrooms often have poor language environment condition for learners Perhaps, adopting technology equipment in teaching English is the best solution to these aforementioned problems because of several following arguments Min (2013) proposes that the use of multimedia technology motivates students to learn English Instead of the traditional teaching methods that are unpopular and less effective in the English language classrooms, multimedia technology, with the help of audio, visual and animation effects, motivates students to learn English quickly and effectively In addition, with such features as abundant-information and crossing time and space, multimedia technology creates a real-life or native speaking country context for English language teaching It must be said in conclusion that the development of technology in this era makes positive benefits for teaching English as a foreign language In addition, it will certainly continue to have more enormous achievements in the future What follows is a general overview of the approach of enhancing positive effects for an English lesson applied the CLT activities, including some features of the CLT activities, as well as effectively raising student motivations by adopting technology equipment keeping up with the Industry 4.0 Literature review 2.1 Understanding of the communicative language teaching activity A lot of attempts have been made to provide an insight into the definition of the communicative language teaching activity According to Harmer (2010), “activities in CLT typically involve students in real or realistic communication, where the successful achievement of the communicative tasks they are performing is at least as important as the accuracy of their language use” In his introduction to classroom activities in the CLT, Richards (2006) shows that the CLT activities in classrooms includes two general types – “activities focusing on fluency” and “activities focusing on accuracy” In detail, activities focusing on fluency which reflect natural use of language, focus on achieving communication, require meaningful use of language, and produce language that may not be predictable By contrast, activities focusing on accuracy which reflect classroom use of language, focus on the formation of correct examples of language, practice language out of context, or control choice of language 217 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Tập 16, Số (2019): 216-226 Furthermore, Richards (2006) also divides activities in CLT into three different kinds of practice – mechanical, meaningful, and communicative Following this, mechanical practice refers to a controlled practice activity which students can successfully carry out without necessarily understanding the language they are using Meanwhile, meaningful practice refers to an activity where language control is still provided but where students are required to make meaningful choices when carrying out practice In addition, communicative practice refers to activities where practice in using language within a real communicative context is the focus, where real information is exchanged, and where the language used is not totally predictable In 2001, Richards & Rodgers mention the major activity types – functional communication activities and social interaction activities in the communicative language teaching According to these authors, functional communication activities include such tasks as learners comparing sets of pictures and noting similarities and differences; working out a likely sequence of events in a set of pictures; discovering missing features in a map or picture; one learner communicating behind a screen to another learner and giving instructions on how to draw a picture or shape, or how to complete a map; following directions; and solving problems from shared clues Social interaction activities include conversation and discussion sessions, dialogues and role plays, simulations, skits, improvisations, and debates 2.1.1 Advantages of the communicative language teaching activity As mentioned by Richards (2006), most of the CLT activities involving pair and group work, have many benefits for EFL students In the grouping activities, students can learn when listening to other students in the group Students are able to produce more output that they would utter in teacher-centered instruction, they can be engaged in speech because they feel more comfortable speaking to their peers, and they can develop fluency In their seminal paper of 2004, Nguyen & Nguyen suggest that the communicative approach has the ability to help learners study and practice not only communicative skills but also grammar patterns Besides, these authors claimed that communicative lessons are more effective than grammar-translation lessons in helping learners raise their ability to produce statements correctly and appropriately Learners were more motivated when they experienced more interesting and active communicative grammar lessons than their friends did in the control class The implementation of CLT has brought a lot of advantages for Teaching English as a foreign or a second language As concluded by Richards (2006), unlike audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods, communicative teaching emphasis on “task-oriented, studentcentered” language teaching practice and creates a positive environment for the classroom activities such as group discussion, subject discussion and debates, which can other more opportunities for communication among students and between teachers and students In 218 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Nguyen Van My other words, it makes the “linguistic environment” for students to practice the four English skills 2.1.2 Disadvantages of the communicative language teaching activity When discussing problems of the communicative language teaching activity in English classrooms, Thamarana (2015) have come to the conclusion that activities in the CLT approach are great for intermediate students and advanced students, but for beginners, some controlled practice is needed According to the author, students with low levels of proficiency in the target language may find it difficult to participate in oral communicative activities and, if the exams used by any institution are grammar based, communicative fluency may not be appropriate In addition, Richards (2014) concludes that the unfavorable class-size, especially, classes of 50 or more students are very popular in some countries making opportunities for authentic communication difficult Large class sizes tend to favor receptive activities involving reading and listening because they are less demanding and time-consuming for the teacher than productive activities involving speaking and writing in pairs or groups As a result, the teacher-centered instruction that does not provide students with critical unrehearsed language practice and individual attention The combination of grammar-based instruction, the limited oral interaction of students in the class, and inadequate opportunities to speak English outside of class with foreigners or to travel abroad does not support the development of communicative competence Another problem is the fact that students may feel too shy or embarrassed to speak in class or perform in front of an audience, especially in English “This type of performance anxiety and other feelings students have in the language learning process have long been an important consideration in ELT” (Harmer, 2010, p 91) 2.2 Solutions to the problems of the communicative language teaching activity in English classrooms In the following section, some of the solutions to these problems, including raising student motivations and applying the technology equipment in English classrooms, will particularly be provided This attempt is best wished to enhance the positive effects for the communicative language teaching activities in English classrooms 2.2.1 Raising student motivations We absolutely know that an effective English lesson depends not only on the teaching approach but also on student learning motivation A reasonable explanation for this argument may be that when students come to class, they bring with them their own personalities and their own learning expectations “Their behaviors will also be influenced by their current circumstances and by what happens in the lessons There is always, as well as, the possibility of interpersonal tensions between students, or between students and their teacher” (Harmer, 2015, p 93) 219 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Tập 16, Số (2019): 216-226 Harmer (2015) also mentions that writers on motivation divided the motivations into extrinsic and intrinsic In particular, extrinsic motivation is from outside the leaners themselves and may, for example, be provoked by the need- or the desire – to pass an exam, or by the fact that the learner has a trip to a foreign country and needs to get their language up to a communicatively efficient level In addition, intrinsic motivation is described as a “passion for learning” and “a sense of competence while performing challenging tasks” Students who are intrinsically motivated are driven by a desire to succeed in class and by what happens in the lesson Therefore, the primary function of teachers’ management role is to motivate the learners who are demotivated and to nurture who are already well motivated to the task of learning a foreign language 2.2.2 Applying the technology equipment in English classrooms Today, one of the most popular personal devices is the mobile phone which can be used for recording and playing multimedia contents Students can greatly benefit from having a camera on the cell phones for documenting visual materials and collecting scientific data Additionally, browsing with cell phones is one convenient way for students to surf online Most of the modern mobile phones are incorporated with browsing applications such as Opera Mini, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome Mobile phones have the downloading feature which can be used by students and tutors to download various kinds of materials through their mobile phones easily Teachers can download video through their mobile phones and present them to students through a TV set available in the classrooms In order to create a linguistic environment for foreign language acquisition, one of the effective solutions is to use English videos available on the Internet in the English lesson According to Harmer (2015), watching films can help students see how intonation matches facial expression and what gestures accompany certain phrases Following this way, students can adjust themselves their pronunciation followed the English speakers Along with the problems of the CLT activities, including mixed-level students, unmotivated students, and large class sizes, English teachers might use tape recorders or other audio recording devices in helping students overcome their difficulties in the English speaking skills front of the class According to Armstrong (2000), tape recorders or other audio recording devices, including some software, are among the most valuable learning tools in any classroom This is because they offer students a medium through which to learn about their linguistic powers and help them employ verbal skills to communicate, solve problems, and express inner feelings The most noticeable feature of Industry 4.0 is the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) The AI is applied popularly in many fields of modern life, including aspects of the English language because of its special effects According to Hilfer (2018), 220 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Nguyen Van My “AI and machine learning have great potential to provide targeted speaking practice for many adult learners Machine learning has long been the cornerstone of speech recognition for the automation of speaking instruction and targeted pronunciation training.” As mentioned above, students may feel embarrassed to speak or perform in front of the class, especially in English classrooms Fortunately, Artificial intelligence might be the best solution in this situation McClure (2018) points out that the AI enables the digital courseware to address the individual needs of learners at a level that is difficult to achieve in a classroom In particular, the AI allows students to choose appropriately English courses for their individual needs, as well as identifies students’ weaknesses so that they receive extra presentation and practice of those concepts and content From some above illustrations, engaging the technology equipment in English classrooms is the effective solution to the problems of the CLT activities In addition, we can conclude that a noticeable challenge for English teachers is to use effectively advantages of technology equipment in teaching English keeping up with the Industry 4.0 Procedure The following is to describe a particular lesson using mobile phones and social networks to support the implementation of the CLT activities in English classrooms In this situation, students will work in groups and complete a learning project (making a video about their family) 3.1 Background information Learning objectives: The purpose of the lesson is for students to  Improve the four English skills, but speaking skills is in priority  Work in groups of five or seven students  Make a speech in about 10 – 15 minutes Student level: The lesson should take place after students had exposure to the basic structure of the English language, including the descriptive adjectives, and simple sentence structures The lesson is best used in the context of pre-intermediate English language learners Class size: The lesson can be implemented in large sized classes from 30 to 40 students Organization: individual, groups, and the whole class Language focus: Descriptive adjectives, Simple sentence structures Alternatives: Review on the English tenses, including the present tenses and past simple tense Teaching method: Communicative language teaching (CLT), including main activities such as Task-completion activities, Opinion-sharing activities, Information-transfer activities, Roleplays, or Project-based activities Technology equipment: Mobile phones, social networks, and apps for teaching and learning English 221 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Tập 16, Số (2019): 216-226 3.2 The implementation of the lesson in English classrooms Particularly, the lesson might be implemented following steps Step 1: Teachers divide the class into groups In each group includes from to students Directions to Students: Work in groups of five to seven students The topic for this lesson is Talking about your family Each person in the group must have a job to Using Table 1, write the names of everyone in the group and what each person will Table The task template of each student in groups Name: What this person will do: A B C Step 2: In the class, teachers show video models of native speakers about this topic Similar videos are available on the Internet, retrieved from some websites (http://movies.go.com, or www.youtube.com) Teachers can choose some of them that are suitable for the learning content of the lesson Based on what students saw in the video, they can outline something necessary to complete in this project, as well as practice their listening skills Step 3: In the class, teachers ask students to practice in pairs In this way, students create dialogues following some available questions provided by the teacher  Where are you from?  How many people are there in your family?  What does your father/mother/sister look like?  What is your father/mother/sister like?  What activities you often with your family? This activity enables students to practice interactively their speaking skills in pairs before they work in groups to complete their projects (making a video about their family at home) Step 4: Individually, teachers let students make a small talk about their family In this step, students will make an outline of the speech using linguistic materials in the last lessons Teachers call some of the students to speak in front of the class At the same time, others must listen to their friends carefully and give feedbacks 222 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Nguyen Van My Step 5: In the out of class learning, teachers ask students to work in groups and make a video recording about the topic “Talking about your family” Directions to Students: Each group will make a video with the length from 10 to 15 minutes; All students in the group will have participated in this video; Students must apply something learned in the lesson to their speaking, including descriptive adjectives, and simple sentence structures; Ideas for mobile phone video projects: Students can consider ideas to make a video about the family topic with their mobile phones To begin, they can get ideas from many popular programs on television, including talk shows, game shows, news specials, and parodies To support the process of making videos, students can use some special functions at websites namely movie/TV scripts creations (www.script-o-rama.com, www.simplyscripts.com), or text-to-speech programs creations (www.research.ibm.com/tts/coredemo.shtml) Step 6: After completing their projects, each of the groups will have uploaded their video projects on the website https://classroom.google.com.1 Step 7: Each of the groups will have evaluated videos, uploaded on the website: https://classroom.google.com, following the video assessing rating (see Appendix A) Based on what evaluated from the groups, teachers can choose the most interesting videos to show in front of the class in the next lessons, and ask the chosen groups to make a presentation about their videos Discussion Through an analysis of implementation the aforementioned example, we found that there are many positive effects for English classrooms applied activities in CLT One of the most outstanding effects is that this example can be applied in an unfavorable class-size It might encourage all students to participate in group projects All students in the class have opportunities to practice their speaking skills Furthermore, the activities in this example can engage students in an in-depth inquiry This means that students are engaged in a rigorous, extended process of asking questions, using resources, and developing their ideas when working in groups Most of the CLT activities involving pair and group work, as it can be seen in the above example, have many benefits for EFL students In the grouping activities, students This website allows teachers to make connecting classrooms by email addresses that can help managing student tasks effectively When using this website, teachers can establish deadlines for each particular task, as well as handle the task completion of students In addition, this makes an interactive learning environment because students can comment something about their tasks or others In conclusion, these network tools can help English teachers carry out this activity conveniently Teachers can evaluate the task effectiveness of students and encourage the active participating from students in the class 223 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Tập 16, Số (2019): 216-226 can learn when listening to other students in the group Additionally, students can develop 21st-century skills, students build skills valuable for today’s world, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication, which are taught and assessed In addition, with the support of mobile phones and social networks, students have more opportunities to practice their speaking skills out of the class by recording their voices Moreover, they can be more interactive with others when uploading their records on the social network as the example above In particular, students can give their feedback in a comfortable way, as well as receive some comments for their speaking from others in the class This is the best solution to barriers of the CLT activities that unmotivated students who are too embarrassed or refuse to participate in class activities As reported by Harmer (2010), uncooperative and unmotivated students are a serious problem and can easily disrupt the instructional process in this way However, depending on detailed features of each English class, teachers can use other social networks to support the English teaching (see Appendix B) We need more studies about the effects of the social networks on learning and teaching English in the future Conclusions This article discusses how to enhance the positive effect of the communicative language teaching activity in English classrooms, including raising student motivations, as well as adopting technology equipment In order to improve the effects of activities in CLT, English teachers need to keep up with the development of technology equipment to design more effective and creative English lessons This is increasingly becoming a vital factor in helping students to develop the four– English skills and more ready to face the changes from Industry 4.0  Conflict of Interest: Author have no conflict of interest to declare REFERENCES Armstrong, T (2008) Multiple intelligences in the classroom (3rd ed.) Retrieved from https://erwinwidiyatmoko.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/multiple-intelligencies-in-theclassroom.pdf Harmer, J (2015) The Practice of English Language Teaching (5th ed.) Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited Hilfer, E (2018) The Agency of Artificial Intelligence Retrieved from https://www.languagemagazine.com/2018/06/10/the-agency-of-artificial-intelligence McClure, K (2018) The Agency of Artificial Intelligence Retrieved from https://www.languagemagazine.com/2018/06/10/the-agency-of-artificial-intelligence 224 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Nguyen Van My Magnan, S S (2007) Reconsidering Communicative Language Teaching for National Goals Modern Language Journal, 91(2), 249-252 Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15404781.2007.00543_3.x Nguyen, Q G., & Nguyen, T N H (2004) Applying Communicative Methods to teaching Grammar: An Experiment Teacher’s Edition: Proceedings of an international conference held in Vietnam, March 2004 (pp 16-20) Retrieved from http://www.nzdl.org/gsdl/collect/literatu/index/assoc/HASH0116.dir/doc.pdf Pun, M (2014) The Use of Multimedia Technology in English Language Teaching: A Global Perspective Crossing the Border International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 10.3126/ctbijis.v1i1.10466 Richards, J C (2014) The Changing Face of Language Learning: Learning Beyond the Classroom RELC Journal, 1-18 Retrieved from https://www.professorjackrichards.com/wpcontent/uploads/The-Changing-Face-of-Language-Learning-RELC.pdf Richards, J C (2006) Communicative Language Teaching Today New York, USA: Cambridge University Press Richards, J C., Rodgers, T S (2001) Approaches and methods in language teaching (2nd ed.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Thamarana, J (2015) A Critical Overview of Communicative Language Teaching International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities, 3(5), 90-100 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282877159_A_Critical_Overview_of_Communica tive_Language_Teaching Wang, C (2009) On Linguistic Environment for Foreign Language Acquisition Asian Culture and History, 1(1), 58-62 Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1123/e9052a9716b52fb2f5a41e8b8f8a945d43ef.pdf APPENDIX APPENDIX A VIDEO RATING RUBRIC Topic: _Group’s name: Examiner’s name: _Leader’s name: _ Instructions: Evaluate each criterion below by sticking () the corresponding number using the following five-point scale: EVALUATION CRITERION Needs improvement Fair Good Very good Excellent (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Quality of video script Acting Video content Video organization Video pacing Overall effectiveness 225 Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Tập 16, Số (2019): 216-226 Additional comments: _ _ _ APPENDIX B SOCIAL NETWORKS, APPS, WEBSITES SUPPORTING LEARNERS IN LEARNING ENGLISH Social networks & Supporting websites Language Apps for students to use on smartphones Facebook, Zalo Duolingo – language courses http://movies.go.com; HelloTalk – chat and Q&A www.youtube.com; HiNative – chat and Q&A https://classroom.google.com; Mindsnacks – language games www.script-o-rama.com; Memrise – flashcards and SRS www.simplyscripts.com; Leaf – context and idioms 7.www.research.ibm.com/tts/coredemo.shtml Lingua.ly – native reading and materials Busuu – language courses NÂNG CAO HIỆU QUẢ CỦA CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG DẠY HỌC THEO PHƯƠNG PHÁP GIAO TIẾP TRONG CÁC LỚP HỌC TIẾNG ANH NHƯ MỘT NGOẠI NGỮ Nguyễn Văn Mỹ Trường Đại học Sư phạm Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh Tác giả liên hệ: Nguyễn Văn Mỹ – Email: nguyenvanmy@hcmue.edu.vn Ngày nhận bài: 10-4-2019; ngày nhận sửa: 13-7-2019; ngày duyệt đăng: 18-7-2019 TÓM TẮT Ngày nay, phần đông giáo viên tiếng Anh vận dụng phương pháp giao tiếp vào học tiếng Anh ngoại ngữ ưu điểm bật phương pháp Tuy nhiên, bên cạnh ưu điểm, phương pháp giao tiếp tồn bất cập định liên quan đến đa dạng trình độ động học tập học sinh, lớp có sĩ số đơng, việc thiếu môi trường thực hành ngoại ngữ thường xuyên Trong viết này, tác giả sâu phân tích số quan điểm lí thuyết ưu điểm nhược điểm, số giải pháp khắc phục nhược điểm áp dụng phương pháp giao tiếp, thông qua việc sử dụng thiết bị công nghệ nâng cao động học tập học sinh Dựa tảng lí thuyết này, tác giả minh họa cụ thể hoạt động thực hành dùng để giảng dạy kĩ Nói tiếng Anh cho đối tượng học sinh có trình độ tiếng Anh Từ khóa: đa dạng trình độ người học, động lực học tập, hoạt động dạy học tiếng Anh giao tiếp, thiết bị công nghệ 226 ... communicative language teaching activity When discussing problems of the communicative language teaching activity in English classrooms, Thamarana (2015) have come to the conclusion that activities in the. .. favor receptive activities involving reading and listening because they are less demanding and time-consuming for the teacher than productive activities involving speaking and writing in pairs or... activity in English classrooms In the following section, some of the solutions to these problems, including raising student motivations and applying the technology equipment in English classrooms,